OK guys, I wasn't going to post this, because it seems trivial, but I figured, "What the heck, it might help somebody".
I do my smoking on the front porch of my log house.
Every once in awhile the wind is blowing in just the right direction that the front porch seems to become like a "wind-tunnel".
Wind is a bigger problem than cold is, with an MES!
The last time it happened, I took an old quilted bedspread I keep in my truck for protecting stuff, and screwed it to the open end of my front porch to block the wind.
That seemed to work pretty good.
Last week when I smoked my Prime Rib, the same wind was blowing through the porch, and right across my MES.
The smoke, instead of floating out of the top vent and drifting away, was being whipped off of the top of the smoker, taking heat along with it. When this happens, it actually sucks the heat right out of the smoker, through the top vent !
I had to stop this in a hurry, because my MES was having a hard time maintaining heat!
I remembered my son had borrowed my screwgun---And my portable drill, so I couldn't use my old fix!
I had to stop this some way, and soon! I had that beautiful Prime Rib in there!!!
I knew one time I tried to put an inverted tin can on top of the vent, with holes punched through the bottom.
I didn't like this, because it didn't seem to work very good, plus the smoke & moisture was condensing on the sides of the tin can.
Then that moisture was running down the inside of the can, and would have eventually started dripping through the vent, onto my meat!
I looked around in my garage to see what I could use!
There it was---The last USPS cardboard box I got from my last shipment of goodies from A-MAZE-N-SMOKER !
I took it out to the porch, cut a hole in the bottom with my "Old Timer", to fit over the top vent, and set it right on top of my MES.
It was too windy, so I put a couple of heavy old barn door hinges inside the box to keep it from blowing over to New Jersey.
Then I folded the ears of the end flaps at the right place, so as to allow the side flaps to be where I wanted them.
Then I cut a little slit in each end flap, tied a knot on each end of a rubber band, and stretched it from slot to slot.
As you can see, that rubber band holds the flaps in a position that will block the wind, but allow the smoke to pass through.
This may look primitive, but the heat settled down in my MES shortly after I completed this.
Also it worked good enough for me to save this box for the next time it gets too windy!
Bear
See pics below. Click on pics to Zoom In:
Very Windy:
Even swirling to the other direction:
Cheap (FREE) and easy fix: